


You Tie Me Down And I Bleed For It

by MissjuliaMiriam



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AvengerKink Fill, Gen, PTSD, Shippy if you Squint, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bring tied down and waking in strange places brings back all of Tony's demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Tie Me Down And I Bleed For It

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for this prompt: http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/9218.html?thread=19249410#t19249410
> 
> If you read the prompt it might spoil the story. Anyways. Enjoy.

It's a tough battle, and everyone gets injured, except for maybe the Hulk. Natasha and Clint managed to avoid serious injury only by merit of their agility, and Steve by his healing factor and resilience. Tony, however, is not so lucky. He is beaten and bruised, and when they find him, still trapped within the armour, he is unresponsive, so deeply unconscious that he was close to a coma.

Once Bruce returns to himself, he tells the rest that Tony may not have been sleeping, as is his tendency, and that on top of his injuries was probably too much for his body to handle. His life isn't in danger, Bruce says, but he needs rest.

They take Tony to a hospital, Steve remaining to make sure Tony gets settled in properly, and the doctors pull him aside once Tony is in a bed. The doctor tells Steve that Tony has a tendency to leave the hospital the second he wakes up, and, well. That's not all that productive in terms of rest and healing. Steve is asked if they could restrain Tony, so that he doesn't run away, and Steve agrees, because that's what's best for Tony. After all, he needs the rest.

 

Tony wakes groggy and blurry and confused, and there is an itch at his head, and he tries to raises his arm to scratch it. And he can't. Within seconds, Tony is panicking, fighting his restraints, and he opens his eyes and there are white walls, unfamiliar surrounding, and he's being held down. He can't hear himself scream, all he hears is Yinsen's voice in his ear, telling him not to fight, that the pain will be over soon, but it isn't. Strong hands wrap around his shoulders, and the straps are biting at his wrists, and out of no where there is a needle in his arm and everything fades back to black.

Steve, standing over Tony, relaxes and falls back into his chair beside the bed, wracking his brain frantically for a reason why Tony might have reacted so badly, what could possibly be going on in his head. He can't think of anything, and so he waits, hoping that the next time isn't quite so bad.

 

It's just as bad the second time, and the third. Tony stops even opening his eyes, instead keeping them closed like it would deny whatever monster he is fighting inside his mind. The sedation means his sleep is unnatural, unrestful, and Steve worries that if this goes on Tony will never get the true sleep he needs. But again and again Tony wakes screaming, fighting his restraints until they are cutting his skin, and sometimes he begs and begs for them to let him go, to make it stop. Steve doesn't know what _it_ is.

Something had to give, and by the time a week has passed, something does. Bruce comes looking for Tony, knowing that he should have been out of the hospital by now, and when he looks through the observation window into the room Tony has been given, the flash of fury that fills him nearly shoves him over the edge. He storms into the room, shouting, “All of you, out, now!”

The doctors scatter on instinct, because Bruce can be terrifying even when he isn't green, and when Bruce's eyes meet Steve's, they are shimmering green and angrier than Steve has ever seen him.

“Get. Out,” Bruce growls, and Steve rises but doesn't leave, instead going to stand well out of Bruce's way, in the corner of the room. Bruce goes to Tony's side, where he is just waking from the commotion, and unbuckles the restraints as quickly as he possibly can. The second they're gone, Tony stops fighting and curls into a miserable ball, his eyes squeezed shut. He isn't crying, but he's shaking and gasping in a way that Bruce recognizes as him forcing down tears. Bruce gathers Tony to his chest and lets him break, lets him sob without tears, shuddering in his arms.

Tony exhausts himself that way, and falls into fitful sleep for the first time in a week. Bruce lays him gently back on the bed, and then rounds on Steve.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demands quietly.

“I-”

“Don't you know how terrifying it is to wake somewhere unfamiliar, ties down? Especially for someone like Tony, who's high-profile, and has been kidnapped before?” Bruce is absolutely livid, and Steve holds up his hands in a placating gesture.

“I didn't think,” he says. “I didn't realize it would be that bad.”

Bruce shakes his head. “Honestly, I don't think it should be that bad.” He sighs. “There's something else going on here. But even so, you made the wrong choice.”

“I know,” says Steve, and then both of them settle down to wait for Tony to wake again.

 

When Tony comes to, it's many hours later, and he wakes slowly, peacefully. Steve is near frozen with relief; he had been afraid that something was wrong even beyond the restraints.

“Mmm,” says Tony as he wakes, his eyes fluttering open. Bruce and Steve both come to his bedside, Bruce on one side, Steve on the other.

“Hey, Tony,” Bruce says quietly, and he pats Tony's hand. “How are you?”

Tony frowns then, and flinches as if remembering the last few times he returned to the waking world. “Better than I was,” he mumbles. “Can I go home now?”

Bruce and Steve exchange a glance. “No,” says Steve. “You need the rest. The doctors didn't want to you checking yourself out AMA, so they restrained you.”

“And you let them do it?” Tony demands. “No questions asked?”

Steve shakes his head slowly. “I thought it was for the best. Bruce came looking for you, and he was the one who realized what was going on.”

Tony stares at Steve, his eyes wide, for a long, long moment, and then Steve actually sees his face close off. Completely. Tony's entire body language shifts away from Steve, turning towards Bruce, and he mumbles, “Oh.”

“I am sorry, Tony,” Steve says, his tone pleading. “If I had known, I would never have-”

“Whatever,” says Tony, and he turns away from Steve and closes his eyes.

 

They return to the Tower, and Tony continues to give Steve the cold shoulder. He draws further and further away, instead spending time with Bruce, or alone in his lab. Both Steve and Bruce are mystified by the behaviour, and they try their very hardest to corner Tony and make him talk. The only problem is, when Tony is troubled, he's more slippery than Loki.

It takes two weeks of the both of them watching Tony drink heavily, sleep and eat very little, and work himself half to death (both in the lab and on the battlefield) before they manage to catch him. Tony is working in his lab, and Bruce and Steve have both been locked out. They can see him through the glass enclosure that keeps the elevator from the main part of Tony's safe haven, but they cannot speak to him, or reach him. Steve looks at Bruce for a minute, and Bruce looks back, and then Steve says, “Wait here.”

He comes back with his shield, and without even blinking, swings it at the glass panel with all of his strength. Bruce ducks to avoid the falling glass when it shatters, and Tony whirls around.

“What the fuck!” he shouts. “JARVIS, cut the music.” The loud rock that had filled the room shuts off. “Steve, Bruce, what the absolute fuck are you-”

“We need to talk,” Steve says, striding into the room and slinging his shield over one shoulder. “And you're not allowed to avoid us any more.”

Tony stares. “I thought you were supposed to be the pinnacle of virtue, the perfect man, all that happy horseshit. Not some personal-space-invading, property-destroying, hyper-intimidating dick.”

Bruce sighs and steps in after Steve. “It needed to happen, Tony.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you and your needs.”

“They aren't our needs, Tony,” Bruce says. “They're yours.”

“Fuck my needs, too!” Tony turns around, waving at Dummy. “You, get over here and help me kick them out.”

Dummy doesn't move, and Tony starts glaring at at closest camera. “JARVIS...” His tone is warning, but JARVIS is as unfazed as usual when he speaks.

“You require some from of intervention, sir,” he says. “This seems the most likely avenue.”

Tony growls, then turns back to Steve and Bruce. “Fine. What do you want.”

Steve and Bruce stare Tony down a bit, and then, once Tony backs up a bit and sits on a stool at his workbench, they exchange a glance.

“We need to talk about the hospital,” Bruce says. “Because the reason they wanted to keep you there was so that you could rest and recover, and now you're just reversing any rest you got. You're going to kill yourself, Tony, and we won't watch it happen.”

Tony looks at Bruce, and then at Steve. “You let them tie me down,” he says quietly, talking to Steve.

Steve nods. “I did, and it was wrong of me. I apologize, Tony. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“You've never meant to hurt me,” Tony says. “Plenty have, but you're not one of them.” He sighs. “Look, I'm still pissed at you, and I don't want to talk about it. If I accept your apology and sleep more and stuff, will you go away?”

“No,” says Bruce. “We need to know why you freaked out, so that we can avoid any other reminders in the future.”

Tony barks out a laugh. “I can't avoid reminders of it. Not ever. The biggest one is stuck in my own damn chest, keeping me alive.” He taps the arc reactor, and suddenly some of the fog clears.

“Tony...”

“I was awake,” Tony says, like he can't stop. He taps the arc reactor again, drumming a pattern like a heartbeat into it. “I was awake for all of it, for Yinsen carving a hole in my ribcage, for muscle being moved and cut out, for him attaching a goddamned car battery to a magnet in my fucking chest.”

Steve has a hand over his mouth now, but Tony keeps talking. They asked for the truth, and that's what they're getting, he thinks, and it's vindictive. “I remember shoving the prototype into my own chest and having to learn to breath around it. But mostly I remember them tying me down to the table so that I wouldn't squirm. Because someone was cutting a fucking hole in my chest, and I felt every second.”

Tony holds up his wrists, and there are scars on his arms, horizontal lines that didn't heal neatly. “I bled on that table,” he says. “I couldn't stop myself from screaming and fighting to get away, even if it meant I died. I just wanted it to stop.”

And then he falls silent, and Steve and Bruce just stare at him, as if they've never seen him before. They'd never really thought about the fact that Tony had endured torture,  _real_ torture while he was being held. That he had a serious piece of technology lodged in the centre of his ribcage, and it had to have gotten there somehow. They'd never realized that the thing that kept Tony alive was also a constant reminder of the most horrific moments of his life.

“I'm sorry,” Steve says. He doesn't know what else to say.

“Whatever,” says Tony. “Now get the fuck out of my workshop.”

They do.

 

Neither Steve nor Bruce try to approach Tony after that. They let him come to them. And he does come, eventually. It's a few days, but Steve finds a new set of pencil crayons and a note that says, ' _You didn't know_ ' on the drawing desk he keeps in his room. Bruce finds a similar note and a page of solved algorithms that he had been working on tucked under a coffee cup in his lab.

They each go on their own time to see Tony then, and he doesn't say much to either of them, but the way he looks at them means that they're forgiven, and that they can move on now. Tony is not one to linger in the past, and for that they are both grateful. It means he doesn't hold grudges either.


End file.
